


illusory

by cazzy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cuddling, Hurt/Comfort, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Nightmares, PTSD, canonverse, let shiro find comfort in someone who understands his trauma, they deserve to be happy, vague depictions of dreamed character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 01:18:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11956677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cazzy/pseuds/cazzy
Summary: It can be hard to discern dreams from reality when you've gone through as much as they have.





	illusory

**Author's Note:**

> shatt is love, shatt is life
> 
> i'm dying for s4 content of rebel matt saving and/or kicking shiro's clone booty. anyway this was surprisingly written before season 3 came out for the shatt zine, [closer to home](https://twitter.com/MattShiroZine)! preorders are closed but keep an eye out for when sales possibly go back up!
> 
> come chat with me about how amazing matt and shiro are on [twitter](https://twitter.com/shitpostney), friends!

Shiro opens his eyes and sees the stars.

It’s a familiar sight, one he’s seen since childhood. He’d learned pretty quickly that the stars against that expansive sky shifted based on his location: the view from his home differed from the sky of the Garrison from the way stars blurred past him as he hurtled through space in an airtight ship, and it was utterly captivating.

The sky right now is beautiful, albeit unfamiliar. He sweeps his gaze about, searching instinctively for any of the constellations visible from Earth that he memorized long ago, but none are immediately clear to him.

Not on Earth... but where, then?

He spins on his heel, determined to find something discernible to help him identify his location. It doesn’t look like Black’s in the immediate vicinity — she’s not exactly a small piece of machinery, and the flat expanse ahead of him is definitely not harboring his lion. Shiro has no recollection of how he got here, but that’s fine. He’s mobile, and as he looks down, he realizes he’s decked out in his paladin armor, which is a stalwart comfort in such unfamiliar terrain.

He’s completely alone, though, and the silence is stifling. The isolation reminds him of astronaut training — suspended in false zero gravity with no one around, body acclimating slowly to the shift of atmosphere.

There’s a sudden bright flash, like the iridescence of lightning touching down on the ground before vanishing into afterimages burned into his irises, and then all he sees is death.  
  
“This is—” he chokes out, but the rest of his words don’t come, no matter how hard he tries to push them out, to release them so that they no longer exist inside of him, festering in his lungs as his body turns to poison, inside out —

_This isn’t what I wanted._

_This isn’t supposed to happen._

_This is all my fault, isn’t it?_

Shiro looks down, and then immediately, instinctively tears his gaze away, anywhere from his own body.

The image remains crystal-clear in his mind, though: there’s a bayard in his human hand, his Galra-tech arm still glowing with the heat of activation, and the evidence of what he’s done marring the shiny metal of both weapons as bodies lie at his feet.

Zarkon’s voice echoes suddenly in his head, radiates through his entire being. It sounds like the purr of Black, satisfied and almost eerie with how easily it slots against the base of his spine, like it belongs there in a feeling so natural it’s impossible to dislodge.

 _Nice work,_ Zarkon says in his mind. _You executed your mission perfectly._

 _No._ It’s a lie. It has to be. There’s no way Shiro would ever do something like this; he’d never hurt his own friends, would never side with _them_ —

Shiro jerks into consciousness with the urgency that comes with imminent danger. _Something’s wrong,_ the frantic beat of his heart whimpers —

“Shiro,” a voice murmurs in the darkness, and then there are hands pressing against his shoulders. They’re not trying to constrain him; the touch is gentle, clearly meant to be reassuring, but it still makes his skin crawl. A choked noise makes its way out of his throat, more an instinctual sound of fear than an actual attempt at words. He finds himself scrabbling for purchase on the bed, seeking more of his partner’s touch — warm, human, _real_ — even though he knows he should be recoiling instead.

He’s dangerous, isn’t that much obvious?

"Hey," the voice says, quiet and calm. “I know it’s cliche to say, but it was just a dream. You’re here with me. Everything’s okay.”

It’s almost like he’s woken up into another dream, Shiro thinks frantically as he finally places the voice. But it’s impossible for Matt to be with him — Shiro had abandoned him on a Galra ship, acting selfishly and without regard for either of the Holts, had left them to perish in the hands of the Galra —

But — no, that isn’t right either.

Matt had survived, had crawled out of the hellhole of the arena, had somehow escaped a Galran prison, had joined a rebel force of fighters while Shiro sat there, trying to play at saving the entire universe even though he’d failed to save even a single person...

And Matt’s here with him, now.

Shiro exhales a shaky breath. “Matt.”

“Yeah,” Matt responds reassuringly. He’s curled up next to Shiro despite the fact that he must’ve been moving around during his nightmare and probably wasn’t the most comfortable of bed partners. Shiro knows he's become a restless sleeper, ever since everything went south at Kerberos, and tonight's definitely no exception.

“Sorry,” he manages. “For waking you.”

Matt scoffs. "Yeah, like I’ve never woken you up because of mine. Want to talk about it?”

He doesn’t respond immediately, mind still swirling too much to try and parse a way to convey his current emotions. A hand slips around his hip, comforting, and Shiro forces his tensed muscles to relax. _Everything’s okay,_ he hears in Matt’s voice, and it takes a few more moments of silence to cement the fact that _this_ is reality, not his warped dreamland.

He feels a little better, just being awake and from the desolate world of his nightmare. Matt’s presence is grounding in a way that nothing else could possibly be, right now, and he appreciates it more than he thinks Matt will ever know. (Maybe that isn’t the case — Matt relies on him on the nights where _he’s_ the one jerking and whimpering as his legs tangle in the sheets like a cloth prison, but.)

“I hate it,” he says after what feels like hours of silence. His arm stretches toward the ceiling, and in the darkness he can almost mistake it for a human limb. It’s too dim inside their room to see the shine of metal, to see the exact spot his human flesh meets with the harshness of artificial alloys, and he pretends for just a moment.

“I love every part of you,” Matt says, and there’s a seriousness to his tone that Shiro doesn’t hear often. It’s usually drowned out by the wry humor Matt tends to adopt. “Even this.” His fingers curl around the smooth metal of Shiro’s wrist, tugging it back down until it rests flush against his chest.

“It’s not me,” Shiro responds, and maybe it’s the aftermath of the dream still clouding his mind or the bitter taste in his mouth, but it feels _wrong_ to touch Matt with it, like their shared contact will contaminate him with Shiro’s worst fears.

“It is.” Matt shifts until he’s pushing himself up on the bed, over Shiro, and he breathes against his lips, “It’s a mark of survival. You never let them win, not a single time. And you’re incredible for it. You’re using their own weaponry against them. ”

They’ve kissed countless times before. Shiro’s memorized them, from the soft, slow good morning kisses to the quick ones as they pass one another on the castleship, both caught up with their respective universe-saving duties, but this kiss, as Shiro cranes his neck just enough to press his own lips against Matt’s, feels like none of them. This kiss is an affirmation that they’re real, that they’re here, that they’ve survived and will continue to, and Shiro pours every ounce of strength into it.

He doesn’t know where he’d be without Matt. He’s more important than the north star that he’d stared at every night as a kid, memorizing its location so that he could find it no matter where he was in the solar system — Earth, or the moon of Pluto, or anywhere else.

But Matt’s a better point of focus, Shiro thinks.


End file.
